Was lucky enough to trip over the Goanna band a while back, just before they kicked off their Spirit of Place 40th anniversary tour.
They were snapping promo photos around the brooding bluestone passages of the old paper mill at Fyansford. I was with some mates banging away on Irish tunes in Graham Houghton’s Door Gallery.
We conspired loosely on a couple of old Little Feat songs, Willing, Sailin’ Shoes, with Marcia Howard banging away on the piano. Little Feat’s Billy Payne produced Goanna’s second album, Oceania, after the runaway success of the debut Spirit of Place and its seminal Solid Rock.
The band was at the mill because they’d rehearsed there back in the day, one of a multitude of musical outfits with close ties to the place. In fact, they formed in Geelong.
The tour they were about to embark on was to prove a great success, and a powerful rallying call for the indigenous rights that Marcia’s brother Shane’s Solid Rock lyrics drove:
Well, they were standin’ on the shore one day
Saw the white sails in the sun
Wasn’t long before they felt the sting
White man, white law, white gun
Don’t tell me that it’s justified
‘Cause somewhere, someone lied.
The song’s one of the most important songs ever written, says singer Loren Kate. Eddie Mabo said it stopped him in his tracks. People like Yorta Yorta musician Scott Darlow say it changed his life.
Troy Cassar-Daley says the song is educational, spreading a message of truth, one of the best things a song can ever do. Goanna’s great friend Archie Roach, initially sceptical of the song, talked with Howard about building bridges for our children and grandchildren.
The band’s impact and legacy continues directly and indirectly daily. As the old adage has it, truth will out.
A powerful series tackling our still largely-unspoken history kicks off tomorrow on SBS. The Australian Wars looks at the bloody battles between blacks and whites across early Australia. Been a long time in coming and you wonder if it might not share a little of Solid Rock’s seminal nature as well.
Even locally, it’s not hard to find such stories. The Wadawurrung relate horrifying massacres such as Dog Rocks, where white settlers slaughtered woman and children while their men were away hunting.
Geelong’s Tom Wills, father of Aussie Rules footy, lost his father at Cullin-la-ringo in Queensland in 1861 in an Aboriginal attack that killed a total of 19. It was triggered by a neighbouring squatter killing blacks. Historian Henry Reynolds says subsequent white repercussions killed tens of thousands of Aboriginals.
Melbourne founder John Batman, who struck his discredited 1835 treaty for 600,000 acres with the Wurundjeri, possibly with Geelong’s William Buckley as interpreter, was a killer of Aboriginals. And a liar, braggart, swindler and womaniser.
Batman was a bounty hunter and took part in Tasmania’s appalling Black Line massacres. He died to syphilis, which infected several of his children from birth, some adopted by Geelong figures such as founding mayor Alexander Thomson.
It’s telling that he’s been expunged in recent times from house names at Box Hill High, Northcote High and Melbourne Girls Grammar. Northcote’s Batman Park has also been renamed.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Batman deserves glorifying, not by a long shot. But he shouldn’t be forgotten. He and his misdeeds need to be remembered. The stone cairn and street name at Indented Head, where his settler party first landed at Port Phillip, point to a loaded but important story.
Cast history and its controversies aside and you risk ignorance at odds with informed decision-making. And some things simply can’t be whitewashed. As Shane Howard sings:
Yeah, well someone lied,
Someone lied,
Genocide.
And as he also told me last week: “Really important that these stories be told as we move into an era of truth telling.”
– If you want to catch Goanna playing, check out this weekend’s AFL Grand Final at half-time. They’ll be performing with First Nations artists Christine Anu, Emma Donovan, Tasman Keith and William Barton. Goanna will also perform at Geelong’s Costa Hall on November 18. Tickets from geelongartscentre.org.au
This article appeared in the Geelong Advertiser 20 September 2022
